Read Online Irish Melody by Caitlin Ricci - Free Book Online

they hadn’t heard him anymore than they could have yesterday. Only Hannah nodded.
    I guess I still can’t talk to them.
    She frowned and rubbed the back of his hand with the one not wrapped around his fingers. “I’m sorry. It’ll be okay, Ippy. Somehow. I promise.”
    Don’t lie, he chided her.
    Hannah snorted and shook her head. “I’m the daughter of the third in a pack of werewolves. And Evangeline says if I had fur I’d be an alpha. So if I say it’ll be okay, it’s gonna be okay. You got that?”
    He gave her a watery smile. Guess there isn’t anything you can’t do. Best friend to a werewolf and a selkie.
    “More than friends,” she whispered to him before placing a quick kiss on his cheek.
    Ippy looked up at Samson, Travis, and Liam, wondering what they were talking about over in the corner away from them. Even with his hearing, he couldn’t hear them, and that bothered him. But he could hear the howling of the wolves outside. They were getting closer.
    Samson lifted his head and glanced outside before looking back at him. “Hannah, Phillip, get upstairs. Now.”
    Ippy refused to budge. Is it about my dad?
    Hannah moved onto her knees beside him. “Ippy wants to know if it’s about his dad first.”
    Samson gave them a hard glare and Ippy got unsteadily to his feet. Even exhausted, he still had to obey Samson when he gave an order like that. He might have been able to ignore the words, though he had wanted to obey him instantly, but coupled with the glare, Ippy had no choice but to obey him, as much as he didn’t want to in that moment. He wanted to know what was happening, what would be happening, to both him and his family.
    Tell them not to kill him, he told Hannah as he got shakily to his feet.
    “Ippy says don’t kill his dad,” Hannah said as she got to her feet beside him and started to help him up the stairs.
    Liam and Samson were looking at him, both of them wearing sad expressions. He didn’t have to ask what that meant. He slowly nodded and worked his way upstairs with Hannah’s help.
    “I can’t promise that, Phillip. I am sorry,” Samson was saying as Hannah closed the door behind them and Ippy went to her bed. He lay down on his side, taking the place he liked most—on the side of the bed that was closest to the window.
    Hannah went to her dresser and pulled out a pair of shorts from the top drawer. She threw them to him before turning around and sitting on the edge of the bed. For a long moment he didn’t move, but finally realizing that she wasn’t going to turn back around to face him until he had some clothes on, he put them on.
    “Good?” she asked him when he’d stopped moving.
    Yes.
    He reached for her and played with a strand of her still damp hair as it fell against his fingertips. She lay down next to him, facing him on her bed. “This sucks,” she mumbled into her pillow.
    He put his hand between them and she covered it with her own. Yeah.
    “I’m sorry your dad did that to you. Can I do a bit of first aid on you? Shane has been teaching me. He’s a decent nurse. Says I’ve got some talent. Too bad I don’t have the patience to deal with people all day like he does.” She smirked and Ippy slowly nodded.
    She slowly got up from the bed, went into her bathroom and returned with a clear plastic box. She sat down cross legged on the bed beside him and he held still, waiting patiently for the tears to come as she started bandaging him up. She spoke quietly, reassuring him as different cold liquids stung, but he wasn’t paying too much attention to her.
    Had his dad ever really loved him? Had his mom? He liked to think that they had. But thinking about how they treated him and how Hannah’s dads treated her, he knew that there was no contest. They were still his parents though, for all their faults. And he should have been sad about them being in trouble. He knew that he was supposed to. But he couldn’t make the tears come. Or the words. He should tell